About Yen Kai

Yen Kai the spend-thrifter loves to eat, drink, travel and spend save money. He's always pondering on ideas to solve the little problems of everyday living (what to eat, where to go, what to buy, how to save money etc.) and shares them here on this blog.

Parcel forwarding from the US – vPost vs ezbuy

So, i just shipped two Amazon parcels from the US, using vPost and ezbuy respectively. I’ve been shipping parcels from the US using ezbuy exclusively for years, but was forced to look for an alternative recently.

You might be wondering, why would i need to ship Amazon parcels through a third party forwarder if there is Amazon Prime in Singapore that offers free shipping. The reason is, prices found on Amazon Prime are much higher than that on the Amazon US website. Either that, or the product is not available. There are categories of goods that you will not find on Amazon Prime, such as Coffee Beans and other imported food.

So, how did vPost fare against ezbuy? Poorly, mostly. Here’s why:

It took 3 working days to update the account status after parcel delivery to the warehouse, whereas ezbuy does it typically within a day.

vPost is very expensive. There is a base charge of $13.40, and on top of that, you pay at least $0.91 per 100g (actual weight). ezbuy used to charge the shipping by volumetric weight (which is almost always more than actual weight), but they now offer actual weight shipping as well, going at $3.99 per 500g.

vPost shipping duration is 9 – 12 working days whereas for ezbuy, it is 8 – 11 working days. For vPost, if you factor in the additional 2 working days it takes to acknowledge parcel receipt in your account, it is even longer.

The only advantage vPost offers over ezbuy is, the price includes home delivery. *Update*: vPost delivery was ahead of schedule. An SMS was sent before delivery. *Update 2*: ezbuy parcel arrival was well ahead of schedule. The ETA was 8 Aug but i received the parcel ready for collection notice on 31 Jul. Basically, you pay the economy shipping fee but still get standard shipping anyway!

Here are the prices quoted by vPost and ezbuy respectively for my shipments, for your reference.

ezbuy – $15.96 for 1.99 kg. (Note that there is always an additional 10% added onto the final tally of the actual weight )vPost – $23.41 for 1.1kg

If, for some reason, you cannot ship via ezbuy, comgateway may be another alternative worth exploring (i was their customer before ezbuy came along).